The Cardinals have clearly had quite a bit of success on the field, with 8 playoff appearances in 15 seasons, and the 2006 World Championship. GMs Walt Jocketty and John Mozeliak have been extremely productive, and have been aided by the help of manager Tony LaRussa and pitching coach Dave Duncan. All information is drawn from Baseball Reference.

The Cardinals have had quite a bit of success on the field in the last 15 seasons, and as a result they have not had a lot of early picks in the first round of the draft. In the 15 previous drafts (not including 2010), they have had 25 picks, with only 2 picks in the top 10 (J.D. Drew and Braden Looper). Overall, the first round has brought them some reasonable success, as they have drafted players like Matt Morris, J.D. Drew, and Colby Rasmus in the past. Clearly, the biggest victory of all draftees is the one taken in the 13th round of the 1999 draft, Mr. Albert Pujols. Unfortunately, beyond him, there has only been even 1 All-Star Appearance by any of these players while they were with the organization. 22nd round pick Jaime Garcia could change that this year, as he is having an excellent season so far. Overall, the Amateur draft has had some solid picks, but overall they haven’t done a whole lot with the draft.

International Free Agency

I was surprised to find that none of the players I selected were international free agents. Not a single one of them. Digging into Baseball America’s Top 10 prospects for the team, only 1 of the top 10 (Eduardo Sanchez) was signed out of an international market. The team does pretty well with their ability to find good professional free agents, so this has not really been a glaring miss to this point. At some point though, I would have to imagine that they are going to need to improve their scouting and development areas with regard to the international markets, as they are missing out on some talented players.

Overall Grade

C-. The Cardinals clearly are being carried by their best player, Albert Pujols. But if you take him out of the picture, you have a lot of players who have not done a whole lot with the Cardinals. And while they have traded quite a few of these players for key pieces to their success (Barton, Perez, Mortensen, Polanco), many of them didn’t really see any particular level of success with the Cardinals themselves.